Slightly reduced randomly spawning area nodes in Alpha County and Deadfall while increasing placed nodes in encounter areas in these locations.

Art:

Adjusted no mount zones around keeps to prevent an exploit Merchants Added Crate of Harvester fuel and Harvesting Prospector to Reward Merchant

Patch 2.4

Patched on Wed 2012-04-25

Live 5/17/2012

Global Territory Control

Global Territory Control has arrived! The battle for Faction dominance that began in The District has now spread to the rest of the wasteland. Those belonging to the Faction that controls the most territory will earn a nice skill boost to Melee, Pistol, Rifle, Power, and Precision. You will also earn more Death Toll, Experience, Faction, and Random AP and enjoy a crafting speed bonus. Show the other clones who’s boss and take control for your Faction!

Keeps have been added to new locations such as Office Park, Feral Boughs (near Quarantine), Tinker's Dam, The Dump, Fender Gate, and Park City.

All Keeps have Keep Defense missions that are level-appropriate for the area.

Fixed a bug that caused Keep Defense missions to award too much experience.

Faction Control Points have been added to Waste Farm and Hollister Point. The Faction Control Points in non-PvP areas have been removed.

Keeps in Conflict Towns add influence to the town, just like Faction Control Points.

Keeps in Conflict Towns are only immune for 30 minutes.

All Timed Conflict Towns have been changed to regular Conflict Towns.

Fixed a bug that would cause Conflict Towns to delay changing to a new owner. The threshold for controlling a town is calculated differently and will often be lower than before.

Changed how timed explosives work to prevent potential deadlocks.

All Keep upgrade items and timed explosives now come in three different level tiers based on what area/level range the zone is in. Only items of the correct level may be used on a Keep. A Keep Barrier Reinforcement item purchased in Tinkersdam (Sector 2) will not work to upgrade a barrier in The Foothills (Deadfall).

Players that don’t have a Chosen Faction will no longer receive Faction points when a player they are in a team with captures a Keep.

There is a new Conflict PvP area to the south of Los Alamos called The Foothills.

The control mechanic for The Foothills is a Conflict Town with the 3 Keep system, however there are no supplemental missions for controlling the area. Control of The Foothills area will be decided strictly through PvP.

Controlling a Keep or Conflict Town can provide access to special merchants that increase their stock based on how long control has been maintained.

Faction Changes

Shoulder factions have been removed. If you run a mission for a faction, you only earn points in that faction and lose points in the opposite faction. If you kill a player or NPC of a faction, you only lose points in their faction and gain points in the opposite faction.

Players must now choose a single faction to participate in most PvP activities, access faction-gated merchants, or chat in a faction channel.

To choose a faction, talk to a faction chooser NPC in one of the faction towns in Sector 2 or Sector 3.

You can choose any faction with which you have a positive reputation. It does not have to be your highest faction, but you can only have one chosen faction.

Your chosen faction replaces all the functionality that used to depend on your current highest faction. It will determine which faction channel you are in, which faction Control Points and Keeps change to when you capture them, whether you can access faction merchants, and what faction you give to other players when killed.

Once you choose a faction, you are locked into that faction until your reputation with that faction becomes negative. If your reputation with your chosen faction is negative, your chosen faction will be reset, and you can choose a new faction.

Players do not earn faction points from PvP kills if they or their target have no chosen faction. Players do not earn faction points from PvP kills if they have a positive reputation in their target's chosen faction. Players do not earn faction points from PvP or PvE kills if they have 0 points with the target's highest faction.

Players no longer earn less faction points as they gain ranks in a faction.

Faction gains from PvP kills are now treated the same as those for PvE kills.

Players who enter a PvP area below their level now get a debuff that caps some of their stats to a lower level. The old Equalizer debuff has been disabled.

The faction harvesting knowledges are now only active if you have chosen that faction. Players can only harvest from nodes for their chosen faction.

When you gain a Faction Control Point, the bonuses now only apply to players in the area with the same chosen faction. It does not apply to players on the same team as the player who took the point.

Most missions have had their faction rewards increase by 50%.

Missions in Deadfall now reward faction points up to 750,000.

Frontend

Added feature that makes PostFX default to off when video settings are set to low or medium from the options in the updater.

PvP

Players now earn reduced experience for player kills in Blood Sports. Players who are at the level cap for their bracket do not earn any experience.

Experience and Faction gains in PvP now work the same as DeathToll. Each time a player dies in a short period of time, the amount of Experience and Faction they give is reduced in a triangular fashion (/3, /6, /10, /15, /21). Previously each kill lowered the experience by 20%.

Fixed another issue that could cause players to not respawn in Blood Sports.

Blood Sports DeathToll gains are now affected by account level and buffs.

Faction Control Point DeathToll and Faction gains are now affected by account level and buffs.

Adjusted the no mount zones around the keeps in FTC.

Art

Haven has been revamped to improve both player experience and hardware performance.

Animations, sounds and muzzle flash now properly display for rifles, shotguns and SMG’s.

Camps, Harvesters and Progress Towns

Harvesters can only be placed in Territory Control areas that are a high enough level to generate the resource they create.

The rewards for harvester barrels containing uncommon and rare components have been reduced.

Harvesters now persist through a restart.

The way all camps and related systems calculate time has been changed. Camps no longer count down their time while the server is offline.

Fixed an issue that could cause Progress Town attackers to become PvP flagged or have their loot rights transferred to an NPC.

To prevent an exploit, players now get the Active Camp and Active Harvester effects every time they log in and these effects persist through death.

Harvesters no longer despawn when the nearby keep or flag changes hands. The owner of the harvester can no longer get items from the internal bin if the keep or flag changes hands. Harvester despawning was acting more as a disincentive to attack keeps than an incentive to capture them.

Harvesters now have varying spawn rates based on the area they are placed. Approximately every 5 days, the resources will move from one location to another. Each general area has a different spawn rate for each resource. The rate differences are much more noticeable in the last hour the harvester exists.

NPCs

Fixed the Social values of several merchants.

Regular merchants in Camps and Progress Towns now have slightly better prices for players with points in Social.

NPC town guards should no longer drop items.

Some Master build creatures have had their stats adjusted, such as Doctor Kirsh, Professor Thornberg, and Professor Emeritus Smith in Chemtown.

Fixed an issue where some NPCs were not dropping the items they were supposed to be.

Added merchant only components to the merchant "Humberto Namir" in Chemtown.

Fixed an issue where CHOTA Warriors in Tinkersdam were instantly respawning.

Fixed an issue where Derick Bastian in Gaia sounded like a girl.

Fixed an issue where Lightbearer guards in St. Sebastian's were attacking Lightbearer players.

Adjusted loot tables on CoGs near Chemtown to account for mission goals.

World Events

Added a World Event to Barret Manor.

Added a World event to Blockade.

Tutorial

You can once again skip the tutorial without fighting the first Clone Dissector.

Players now get all the harvesting and mining knowledge’s automatically in the tutorial. The price of all harvesting and mining knowledge books has been decreased to 1 chip.

The order that help tips appear has been changed to match changes in the help tips window.

Missions

Fixed a rare bug in certain Defend missions that would prevent players from getting the last wave of attackers or getting credit for the last wave of attackers.

Fixed a bug with locked doors in instance missions.

Reduced the amount of items required to complete the mission "Conservation of Mass" in Kristo's Rest.

Reduced the amount of items required to complete the mission "Best of the Rest" in Kristo's Rest.

Fixed an issue where the third step of the mission chain "Steve's New Toy" in Oilville would not work properly.

Adjusted the mission "Workplace Safety" in Mumford so that the friendly NPCs are no longer in the way.

Adjusted Pat Haskins’ position for the mission “The Doctor’s Peril” in New Flagstaff.

Basic Medium and Light ammunition crafting times have been reduced, and efficient and economic light/medium/heavy ammunition recipes now have scaled crafting times similar to the basic recipes.

Most low level Recipes in Armorcraft, Weaponry, and Ballistics have had their crafting times reduced.

Added Deathtoll Consumable Recipes, Knowledge Books, Components, and Items for Creeper, Porkupine, and Lizard Dog serums. These items are a new consumable type that take up a new slot, and can be used in addition to the normal Food/Drink/Consumable slots.

Component Merchants have been changed to a new type of merchant – this kind of merchant sells a limited number of items, and will add to his stock after a set time period, in increasing amounts. These merchants will only sell to the controlling faction.

Component Merchants sell different items. Conflict towns now have component themes; some towns will have a supply of metals, others will have cloth or medical supplies.

New Death Toll merchants sell the new consumables in limited amounts, and some old Death Toll merchants have been changed over to be limited supply merchants. Not every merchant will sell all of the items. These merchants will only sell to the controlling faction.

Bulk purchasing has been added to merchants in the game. You can buy up to an item’s max stack count with each purchase. You can’t buy more than one stack at once.

Trainers

Skill and Mutation trainers now sell knowledges rather than books, and display information about each knowledge they can teach. Players can filter these knowledges by whether they know the knowledge already, whether they can afford the knowledge, and whether they have the skill required to learn the knowledge. Recipes using Skill Books or Injectors will be updated to no longer require these items.

Crafting

The offline crafting time limit has been removed.

Instead of a time limit, players have different crafting queue sizes based on their subscription type. Scavenger accounts have a limit of 1 item. If you every buy anything from the store, the limit increases to 3 items. Survivalist accounts have the current limit of 20 items. Wastelander and Commander accounts have a limit of 30 items.

Most low level Recipes in Armorcraft, Weaponry, and Ballistics have had their crafting times reduced.

Misc

The trial user reminder no longer shows up every login.

All players now have a new ability called "Find Closest Garage" under their general abilities. This ability will give you a mission and a waypoint that leads to the closest garage.

Increased the amount of low level nodes around starter towns.

Increased the amount of harvest, scavenge, and mining nodes in Sector 1.

Added no mount zones to the Coppermine LifeNet Pod and the Faction Territory Control LifeNet Pods.

Experience rates for Scavenger players have been changed from 75% to 100%.

DeathToll rates for Scavenger players have been changed from 75% to 33%.

Fixed an issue where unlocked wardrobe slots could be offset by 1 so players were able to equip items in slots they didn't unlock or not able to equip items in slots they did unlock.

Slightly lowered or added stairs to several LifeNet pods so they can be entered without jumping.

Respecs should give better feedback when they fail. If you attempt to respec and get the message "There was an error calculating total AP", look at your chat window. Players with small discrepancies (gaining or losing up to 20 AP) are now fixed automatically instead of being unable to respec. If you are unable to respec due to this error, contact a GM.

Added stable managers to Zanesville's LifeNet Pod.

Added a stable and garage manager to Embry Crossroads and New Flagstaff by their respective LifeNet Pods.

Players now jog to their mounts instead of walking to them.

Merchants now have a buyback function on them. This allows a player to buy back items from merchants for the same price, up to your last 10 items sold.

Fixed an issue that was causing players to get silently disconnected and/or stuck at the “Loading World” screen.